


How to Tell Chris Traeger

by kyrieanne



Series: Telling Everyone [2]
Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-18
Updated: 2011-11-18
Packaged: 2018-03-20 06:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3640218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrieanne/pseuds/kyrieanne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to "Smallest Park" Ben and Leslie still have a few things to hash out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Tell Chris Traeger

She exhales or sighs or gasps or maybe she just breathes but whatever she does in that moment it's not like any breath she's taken before. She does it right before it happens, a long, sliding cut of air into her lungs and out. It is her only preparation for the beginning of  _everything_.  
  
Ben kisses like he balances budgets: with a decided confidence that knows exactly what he is doing. Leslie used to have problems watching him at work because eventually her mind would linger over the way his brow furrowed and he chewed on that bottom lip of his. It always caused her to think of him working that mouth over her, across her breast bone, counting her ribs one kiss at a time, and then further down until Leslie lost all sense of where she was. She’d end up all hot and bothered and after she confessed this to Ben he’d smirk like it was his own private comedy show.  
  
But now…now he isn’t smirking. He's kissing her.   
  
He cups her jaw, swipes his thumb across the skin just beneath her chin, and drags it down her throat to where her pulse beats wild against her skin.  She winds her arms up his back and pulls because she just wants to be closer, as close as possible. His elbows lock and he guides her mouth one way, then the next, as he nips at her lip. She opens willingly and it is like being possessed or consumed or maybe just loved and adored. But Leslie can feel the emotion pulsating between them and his hips which are straining against her's as if to try to get as close as possible. She makes a noise, a moan, and then Ben is pulling back, one step and a second. He rubs his jaw with both hands, laces his hands on the back of his neck, and the cold hits Leslie like a slap on the wrist. As if she is being chastised back to reality.  
  
“Why’d you stop?” She hiccups to catch her breath.  
  
He looks at her with wild eyes, as if he doesn’t believe she is real, that this is real, and she is tempted to keep talking, to assert and cajole until he follows, but Leslie promised she wasn’t going to steam roll and she’s learning that sometimes that means letting Ben have the space he needs.  
  
“We need to figure this out. How we’re going to handle it. We need to have a plan on how to tell Chris,” he says, eyes cast sideways as he thinks aloud. Her heart lurches and expands. It is so Ben to want a plan. It is so her too, but for once she doesn’t have to be the planner or even the doer. She presses her hands into her sides and makes herself breathe deep because it’s what he needs right now. He needs to feel the ground beneath him, to know that this is real, and that means a plan.  
  
“Okay,” she exhales, rubs her hands together because it is colder than she thought. Ben takes a half step and captures her hands, rubs them between them his own. His thumb skitters across the soft skin at her wrist and Leslie’s eyes flicker up.  
  
“We can’t go home,” he says, grins, “cause I’ll just end up taking all your clothes off.”  
  
“That’s not a bad thing,” she brushes her hips across the lapels of his overcoat.  
  
He drops his forehead to hers and they stand there for a long while just touching that way and Leslie aches a little. Finally, he groans and pushes up. His hand latches onto the lapels of her coat as if he is afraid of drifting too far, “Let’s go to city hall.”  
  
Now that is the last thing she expected.  
  
“Why?”  
  
His mouth quirks up, “Because that is the last place I am going to be tempted to bend you over and…”  
  
“You’re a terrible man.”

  
  
***

  
  
That is how the revenge starts. Something lodges in Leslie’s mind that it's necessary to remind Ben that there isn't a place she won’t tempt him and him her.   
  
It starts out innocently enough. They go to Ben’s office to talk about how to tell Chris. Ben sits behind his desk and Leslie takes the same seat she sat in a few days ago. She can’t help but smile at the distance they’ve traveled since he told her he would be passing the Parks department onto Chris.  
  
Ben lays his hands flat on the desk, “So I think the best time to tell Chris would be after one of his work outs….”

Leslie shrugs out of her coat, throws it on the chair next to her.  
  
“Take advantage of the endorphins.” She finishes and shrugs out of her blazer. It follows the coat.  
  
“Yeah, um. Are you hot?” Ben stares at the place above her breast bone where Leslie has flicked the first button of her blouse open. The air hits the tiny vee of skin and she shivers a little. He works a hand across his jaw and Leslie settles back into her chair, crosses her legs.  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
“Leslie, what are you doing?”  
  
“Relaxing,” she scoots forward so that her blouse drapes and she knows Ben is looking down her shirt, at the black lace of her bra on the swell of her breast. She picks up the first thing that her hand finds. It's his calculator. It's one of those over sized ones that spits out paper. She stands up, rounds his desk, and scoots a hip onto the edge. Ben swivels toward her and slouches in his chair so she can see the front of his pants.  
  
“How much is 69 x 69?” she hopes she says it in that sexy voice, the one she sometimes practiced in front of the mirror before she went to bed.  
  
Ben coughs, “Um 4,761.”  
  
She almost breaks character she's so impressed by his intelligence, but she doesn’t. Instead, she levels her eyes until they meet his. Brown into blue, depth into depth so that it swells up in her. She holds their gaze as she slips off the desk and closes the space between them until their knees knock. She punches 69 into the calculator over and over again until it spits out a long ream of paper. He leans an elbow on the arm rest and lulls his head to the side, one corner of his mouth quirking up as he watches her.  
  
“Leslie." Her name is laced with amused indulgence. She knows what she's doing is more amusing than it is sexy, but she knows Ben. Silliness and play are sexy to him. She rips the paper off, drapes it around her neck, and sets the calculator down. He doesn’t get any further than her name because she straddles him in the chair and lowers her lips to his.  
  
It's the trigger Ben needs. His hands grasp her hips. She can feel him through the front of his pants and it thrills her that it's that easy, that he responds so quickly to her. It gives her a power trip and she sits up on her knees so she hovers over him. She gives herself the advantage of gravity and tugs his head back. The paper tickles her breast as it drifts across her shoulder. She toys with the ends against his neck where his pulse is hammering like hers was earlier this evening.  
  
That is what undoes him. He lifts her out of the chair and onto the desk. The calculator falls onto the ground and cracks. Leslie laughs against his mouth as she snakes her hands down to his pants for his belt.  
  
“You think this is funny,” he mutters against her lips, “think you’ve proven something just cause you got me riled up with a calculator?” He grinds against her, catches her hands, and pulls them up over her head. His presses himself to her and she whimpers. He's leaning on her, grinding and pushing her back into his monthly calendar, but then he moves back and Leslie is about to protest, but he tugs on the front of her blouse, pulls it apart so the buttons fly off and she's left with the plane of her stomach exposed.  
  
“Ben! I liked that shirt.”  
  
“Do you think I care?” He says it against her mouth and now Leslie really is angry because  _dammit_ she did really like that shirt.

  
  
***

  
  
He unhooks her bra, shucks it over his shoulder, and peppers her chest with slow, lingering kisses. Leslie curls around him and practically pleads for him to just do it already.  
  
“Nope,” he says, breaks away and takes her mouth again, “not until we figure out how to tell Chris.”  
  
“I hate you,” she says and he grins against her mouth. It reminds her of that smile he gave Shauna, the one she thought was reserved for her, and she digs her nails into his back.  
  
He stumbles a little bit. “Shit, Leslie.”  
  
She blinks innocence, “I was just practicing in case Chris doesn’t believe us. I might need to pinch him.”  
  
That earns her his hand over her pants, pressing his thumb against her. She hooks her hips around him and when she goes for his shirt he doesn’t stop her. When she scrapes her nails across his back again, presses the pads of her fingers along the vertebrae of his back, and when he doesn’t stop her Leslie thinks she’s made her point. The muscles in her thighs loosen, her body exhales into the wood of the desk, and she becomes pliant.    
  
Ben senses the shift and renews his ministrations with new purpose as he returns to her breasts as his fingers slip her clothes off. It occurs to Leslie that she is naked, sprawled out on her boss’s desk while he still has all his clothes on, but Leslie trusts him. She can feel how much he wants her. She can hear it in the groans her body elicits from him, guttural and base. She can feel it in the way his hands rush over her legs, ass, and up her ribs. It is possessive and needy and Leslie realizes how much she loves this Ben: the one on the precipice with her, the one whose arms encircle her, and the one who dares her to fall with him.  
  
“I missed you so much,” she breathes.  
  
“You had a weird way of showing it,” he says into her neck, tugs on her earlobe with his teeth. It hurts a little.  
  
“Whatdayamean?”  
  
“Didn’t even seem to faze you. Dove right back into everything like nothing had changed.”  
  
“I had to." She breaks away now and meets his eye and it takes both of them a second to focus. “I mean I couldn’t just sit there like a love sick puppy.”  
  
Ben straightens, “Is that what you think I did?”  
  
“Ben,” she scoots away from him which is hard because she's naked, “you ate soup on a bench  _alone_.”  
  
His eyes narrow, “How’d you hear about that?”  
  
“It’s my department.” She hugs her arms across her stomach, “Did you really think I wasn’t paying attention?”  
  
He chews on his bottom lip, which she knows he does when he works and is contemplating his next move. Leslie feels exposed and she’s not sure she likes it. She still trusts him, but it occurs to her that things aren’t going to go back to normal, whatever normal is for them. It certainly isn’t going to be the bubble all over again. Their break-up left a few scars. Nothing they couldn’t get over, but still the hurt is there. They hadn’t exactly been  _nice_  to each other in their break up and it 's left a mark.  
  
“Do you still keep that emergency whipped cream in the mini fridge?”  
  
The question feels like an olive branch. She smiles and tries for her sexy voice, “Yes.”  
  
This gets a gentle grin out of him and he steps close again. She leans back against the lip of his desk and lets him rub his thumb across her cheek bone, “Wait here,” he says.  
  
Ben disappears into the hall and Leslie runs her hands though her hair. She’s not sure what is happening between them. They are oscillating between perfection and disaster at every turn. It baffles her until she remembers that smile, the one that reminded her of Shauna. She doesn’t know why it bothers her because when she thinks about it, rationalizes it, she knows it isn’t the same smile. The difference is in the eyes. Leslie knows this because she knows Ben, she has felt his gaze glance across her back so many times before, that she knows those eyes without having to see them. They are for her and her alone.  
  
But it doesn’t make the hurt evaporate. With the thought of Shauna comes the memory of Ben cutting her out of her treaty and cutting that ribbon. The memories slice through her and she picks up her blouse, punches her hands into the sleeves and wraps the front close across her chest.  
  
“Leslie?” Ben stands in the doorway. He holds the whipped cream can up, shakes it, “it’s almost gone.”  
  
She forces a smile, “You know me.”  
  
He tips his head, but she doesn’t look at him, “I do,” he says, “I know you taste like it by the end of the work day after so many coffees.”  
  
She swallows.  
  
“Leslie,” he stills, “is something wrong?”  
  
“It really sucked when you called me obtuse,” she says, “I mean I know I was being that, but it hurt.”  
  
If Leslie thought he’d gather her up in his arms, apologize, and make gentle love to her she is wrong. He stands there for a long time, so long Leslie almost bends down to get pick up her pants to get dressed, but Ben catches her wrist.  
  
“After we broke up I started to crave whipped cream.” He is very intent on her wrist, swipes it with his thumb, moves into her personal space, and doesn’t meet her eye. “It took me a while to realize I just craved you. The taste of you at the end of the day on my lips. I bought a can and tried it, tried to just try a little before I went to bed, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as tasting it on you.”  
  
Leslie isn’t sure what is happening. His voice is low and caught in his throat. The words don’t come out easy or smooth. They are an admission, but Ben is still very much in control here. He seems to be testing her because he pauses there, listens to her breath, and when she exhales he continues, “Because it sucked Leslie. Not being with you. Seeing you every day and feeling like it didn’t affect you at all.”  
  
“But it did.”   
  
He nods. “I know, but it didn’t feel like it did. It felt like I was all alone in the aftermath. I was just this pathetic guy who bought a can of whipped cream and took shots of it to remember a girl.” Her heart squeezes not just for herself, but for him and for the both of them. Ben continues, “That’s why I need you to forgive me for doing this.”  
  
He tips the can back, squeezes, and squirts the last of the whipped cream into his mouth. She takes half a step back, watches, and tries to understand what he is doing. The cream fills his mouth and he has to lick the sides of his mouth to keep it from dribbling down his chin. It isn’t sexy. It’s the opposite of sexy. Almost macabre. Like she is watching every good sexual fantasy die as the can spits and sputters the last of the whipped cream.  
  
Ben wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, swallows.  
  
“Ben?"    
  
Now his eyes meet hers, a lock of hair falls across his face, and there is a flash of something in his eyes.  
  
“Say it again,” he cups her face. It is gentle now, the pad of his thumb stroking her flushed cheeks.  
  
“Say what?”  
  
“My name,” he tips forward and leans on her a little, wraps his other arm all the way around her waist, “You’d say my name and even though I knew there wasn’t anything in it, it felt personal. It felt like when you said my name you were saying me, who I am.”  
  
Leslie says his name. She says it aloud as she meets his eye. She whispers it in his ear as he lays her back down on the desk. She mutters it against his skin as she helps him out of his clothes. And she gasps it when he enters her, a long last breath that is the same breath she made when she realized he was going to kiss her, that  _everything_  was about to begin.  
  
He says her name too and Leslie experiences the bliss of being known. She hitches her hips up so he delves deeper and faster. They are on his desk and everything else is on the floor. She thinks about someone finding them, but she knows there is no night time security guard anymore. Ben cut it from the budget. She knows there are cameras in the halls but not in the office. He presses the sticky remnants on the inside of her thighs before moving closer. Eventually, she comes. And she comes again as he is inside of her. She loves this because they share the same gasps and moans and desperation. When he is inside of her neither of them has the upper hand. No one can get revenge. They are equal, partners, and it's what they need in these first moments of  _everything_. They need a safe house until the hurts are healed.  
  
“Leslie,” he pants and she knows that sound. She opens her eyes and meets his. She lets him take her over the edge in his arms, and falls gloriously.  
  
In the aftermath, Ben is draped over her and Leslie plays idly with his hair. She muses that she gets a say in his hair again. When they dated she always asked him to keep it neat, combed over, because she liked to mess with it later at night, and she like to look forward to that during the day. But she’d spent an inordinate amount of time while they were broken up studying his hair, and she also likes it mussed all day. She likes the odd angles and messiness on him. It is sexy.  
  
“What?” he says against her shoulder.  
  
“Just thinking about your hair.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Yeah and how much I liked how you did it when we were broken up.”  
  
“I purposefully didn’t do it the way you liked.”  
  
“I know and now I kind of like it that way." She sits up. “What else did you do when we were broken up?”  
  
Ben hesitates. “How much else do you know about the day I ate the soup?”  
  
Leslie grins, lulls her head to the side, “Did Tom ever tell you I went as Batman for Halloween one year?”  
  
***  
  
Ben and Leslie never really figure out how to tell Chris Traeger because they don’t have too. They dutifully put Ben’s office back together, redress, and tiptoe through the halls to their respective cars. What they don’t realize though is that the day security guard does review the tapes each night and when he catches one Leslie Knope, Deputy Director of the Parks Department, slapping one Ben Wyatt, City Assistant Manager, on the ass just as they exit his office it isn’t hard for Chris to fill in the rest.


End file.
